HGMV Presentation: Remembering the Civil War in El Salvador: A Tale of Two Scorched Earth Operations

Thursday, March 10, 4:00PM, 710 Social Sciences
HGMV Workshop presentation by Paula Cuellar Cuellar, PhD graduate student, History Department, UMN
"Remembering the Civil War in El Salvador: A Tale of Two Scorched Earth Operations"

Drawing from history and law, my article assesses the question of international crimes in El Salvador. Specifically, my intention is to debate whether the scorched earth operations, conducted as part of a state policy during their civil wars, indeed constituted practices aimed to destroy the social fabric of whole disadvantaged groups within those countries. Whether those crimes constituted genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes should be discussed in order to further develop measures of truth, justice and reparations in those countries. To test my hypothesis, I will explore two scorched earth operations conducted in El Salvador: El Sumpul and Santa Cruz. In Guatemala scorched earth operations aimed at the Maya have been labeled as genocide by the Commission for Historical Clarification because they constituted an ethnic group.

HGMV Presentation by HEIDER TUN: "Writing Human Rights from the Bottom Up: the Case of the Salvadoran Co-Madres (1977-1992)"

Thursday, March 24, 4:00PM
710 Social Sciences
HEIDER TUN, Department of History, University of Minnesota
Writing Human Rights from the Bottom Up: the Case of the Salvadoran Co-Madres (1977-1992)

Street mural in San Salvador, El Salvador, Artist: Malu

This presentation is part of a larger research project that focuses on the historical development of the human rights movement in Latin America and more specifically, in El Salvador. It will be proposed that three different groups in El Salvador—the state, the opposition and civil society—engaged human rights discourse during the Salvadoran Civil War (1980-1992) to develop and justify distinct agendas, and that these interactions shaped the development of the war. The ways the Salvadoran government and the guerrilla movement (FMLN) used the human rights rhetoric to hide, transform, maintain, and justify violence, while civilian organizations invoked this language to protect life and denounce impunity will be contrasted. The inclusion of the marginalized voices of organized Salvadoran civilian women will illustrate the limits and consequences of universal discourses such as human rights.

Heider Tun is a PhD student in the history department of the University of Minnesota with support from the ICGC Mellon Foundation and DOVE fellowship programs. His research and recent publications focus on the historical development of Human Rights in Latin America. Since 2011 he has been working for a Human Rights Organization in El Salvador called Co-Madres where he actively works to preserve civil war archives, document women’s testimonies and promote human rights. In addition, Heider has done fieldwork in Mexico, El Salvador, and Peru and is interested in topics such as: memory, human rights, global change, colonial history, and popular culture. His interdisciplinary work seeks to bring the history of disadvantaged minority groups to academic discussions.

Learning about Minnesota's connection to the Armenian Genocide: "Armenian Genocide Education and the Community" presentation and discussion with LOU ANN MATOSSIAN

"Armenian Genocide Education and the Community"
Presentation and Discussion with LOU ANN MATOSSIAN
Wednesday, March 30, 6:00 - 7:30PM (light reception to follow)
1210 Heller Hall 
Presented by the Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair, cosponsored by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies   

By the fall of 1915, when the Ottoman Turkish extermination campaign was making headlines across Minnesota, the Armenian Genocide had been underway for six months. Closest to the story were two groups of Minnesotans: ethnic Armenians and Protestant missionaries.

Using historical newspapers and other archival materials, an independent scholar shows how each group helped to shape Minnesota's response to the Armenian Genocide.

Lou Ann Matossian

A trusted advisor for Armenian-American philanthropy, Lou Ann Matossian has long been active in foundation grantmaking, research and writing, media and communications, issues advocacy, and Armenian community affairs. She served most recently as chief development officer of the Armenian Church of America, Eastern Diocese (New York). Earlier, she created and managed the grantmaking program of the Cafesjian Family Foundation (Minneapolis). 

A Discussion about Minnesota's own Dark History

Bdote Dakota Site Tour by Iyekiyapiwiƞ Darlene St. Clair
Sunday, April 3
Fort Snelling State Park

Tour will run 2:00 - 3:30 PM
Shuttle bus departs from UMN at 1:15 PM, returns by 4:00 PM
Details will be provided upon confirmation of registration.
Open to UMN students, staff, faculty, and alumni; community welcome to join if space is available.  Registration required.  Register here.

We are living, learning, and working in a particular place with a long, fascinating, troubling, and frequently unknown story. One goal for this tour is that participants begin to experience the place we live in as Mnisota Makoce, the Dakota Homelands. We will be visiting several Dakota sacred sites located in an area that would later be called the Twin Cities.

How has colonization impacted Dakota use and access to these places? How have Dakota people asserted a continuing relationship with these places? This tour will provide participants with a more nuanced and complicated understanding of the place we call home.
 
Please be prepared for weather and walking.

Iyekiyapiwiƞ Darlene St. Clair, Dakota Scholar and Professor, Saint Cloud State University
St. Clair is Bdewakantuwan (Sacred Lake) Dakota from the Lower Sioux Reservation in Minnesota. Her research and teaching interests include American Indian arts and cultural expressions; American Indian education; oral ways of knowing and learning; the intersections of oppressions, particularly race and gender; and differing definitions and understandings of feminism in communities of color. 

Spring 2016 CHGS Program

Wednesday, February 3, 3:00 PM (325 Nicholson Hall)
DANIEL SCHROETER, University of Minnesota
On the Margins of the Holocaust: Jews and Muslims in the Colonial Maghreb During World War II
Organized by the Center for Jewish Studies, cosponsored by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
 
Thursday, February 18, 4:00 PM (710 Social Sciences Building)
PEDRO CORREA, Research Fellow, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The Spanish Paradox: Spain as a Passive Accomplice and ‘Savior’ to the Holocaust
Organized by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Wednesday, February 24, 1:00-2:30 PM (**Room Change** Blegen 317)
KEMAL PERVANIC, Film Producer
Film Screening and Discussion on Pretty Village (68 min.): a film about a Bosnian village and what happens to a society torn apart by conflict
Organized by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
 
Wednesday, March 9, 2:30-4:30 PM (120 Andersen Library)
Antisemitism in Today's Europe: Between Neo-Nationalism and Global Terrorism
KENNETH MARCUS, Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law 
GÜNTHER JIKELI, Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, Indiana University 
BRUNO CHAOUAT, Department of French and Italian, University of Minnesota
Moderated by PATRICIA LORCIN, Department of History, University of Minnesota
Organized by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Department of French and Italian, cosponsored by the Center for German and European Studies, the Center for Jewish Studies, and the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas 

Friday, March 25, 6:30PM (140 Nolte Hall)
Screening and discussion of award-winning filmmaker Marta Rodríguez’s documentary, Testigos de un Etnocidio: Memorias de Resistencia 
Presented by the graduate student group from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese as part of the Graduate Linguistics and Literature Conference, cosponsored by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Wednesday, March 30, 6:00-7:30PM (1210 Heller Hall)
Armenian Genocide Education and the Community
LOU ANN MATOSSIAN
Organized by the Ohanessian Chair, cosponsored by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies


Sunday, April 3, 2:00PM (shuttle bus from campus to Fort Snelling State Park)
IYEKIYAPEWIN DARLENE ST. CLAIR, St. Cloud State University
Guided Tour of Bdote Dakota Site at Fort Snelling State Park
Organized by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies   

Thursday, April 14, 7:00PM (University Hall, McNamara Alumni Center) 
*2016 Ohanessian Lecture*
PETER BALAKIAN, Colgate University
The Armenian Genocide and Cultural Destruction
Organized by the Ohanessian Chair, cosponsored by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies


Tuesday, April 19, 4:00PM (1210 Heller Hall)
EDITH SHEFFER, Stanford University
Origins of Autism in the Third Reich
Organized by the Center for Austrian Studies, cosponsored by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Wednesday, April 20, 6:30PM (1210 Heller Hall)
ARLENE STEIN, Rutgers University
Reluctant Witnesses: Survivors, Their Children, and the Rise of Holocaust Consciousness 
Organized by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, made possible by the generosity of individual supporters

Wednesday, April 27 (Wilson Library)
Exhibit Opening at Wilson Library: CHGS art and historical objects, curated by students
Organized by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in conjunction with Deborah Boudewyns' "Workshop in Art" course on curatorial theory and practice (ARTS 1490/3490)

Thursday, May 5, 4:00 PM, 710 Social Sciences Building
*Holocaust Memorial Day*
SIDI N'DIAYE, Research Fellow, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The Role of Historical Hate Representations in the Murder of Neighbors in Rwanda (1994) and Poland (World War II)
Organized by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, cosponsored by the African Studies Initiative and the Human Rights Program, held in conjunction with the Holocaust, Genocide, and Mass Violence (HGMV) interdisciplinary graduate student group


Sunday, May 15, 3:00 PM, Sokol Czech Slovak Community Center 
Performance of the Musical Drama Broucci (Fireflies), based on the Czech folktale and performed at the Terezin / WWII Jewish camp-ghetto of Theresienstadt
Organized by Judith Brin Ingber, the Czech and Slovak School and Taneční Mládež, cosponsored by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Center for Austrian Studies

HGMV Interdisciplinary Graduate Group Meeting

Thursday, February 11, 4:00PM, 710 Social Sciences
RITA KOMPELMAKHER, Department of Theater Arts and Dance
“Staying Alive: Human Rights and the Performance of Life Support in Post-Soviet Belarusian Theater”

Margarita (Rita) Kompelmakher is a PhD candidate in the Theater Arts and Dance Department at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Her research focuses on the politics of the body and aesthetic production in relation to migration, globalization and rights discourse. Her dissertation investigates shifts in performance practice in post-Soviet Belarusian theater under the demands of human rights discourse and global capital. Her work is published in Xcp: Cross-Cultural Poetics Journal (Streetnotes), Captured by the City: Perspectives in Urban Culture Studies and the upcoming anthology Performing Freedom: Alternative Theater in Post-Communist Europe. She received a BFA from the Tisch School of Arts at NYU.

UMN and Community Panel Event on Antisemitism in Today's Europe

Wednesday, March 9, 2:30-4:30 PM
120 Elmer L. Andersen Library
Antisemitism in Today's Europe: Between Neo-Nationalism and Global Terrorism
 
**Public Event**

Panel speakers:
KENNETH MARCUS, Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law 
GÜNTHER JIKELI, Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, Indiana University 
ERIC P. SCHWARTZ, Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota
BRUNO CHAOUAT, Department of French and Italian, University of Minnesota
Moderated by: 
PATRICIA LORCIN, Department of History, University of Minnesota
 
Political scientist Gilles Kepel, among other pundits and scholars, has argued that jihadism needs nationalism and nationalism needs jihadism. Both extremisms, in order to gain traction, must identify an enemy. If, for European Neo-Nationalisms, the Muslim/immigrant is the enemy, for jihadism it is the West, modernity, and the Jew.

This panel will examine the new discourse of antisemitism in the context of a deadly dialectic between neo-nationalism and global terrorism, in a time when the Jewish population of Europe is caught in a vice between old European nationalist antisemitism and a belief in an apocalyptic transformation of society that also scapegoats Jews.  

Feb 24 film screening and discussion on PRETTY VILLAGE: What happens to a society torn apart by conflict?

Wednesday, February 24
1:00-2:30 PM
Blegen 317
KEMAL PERVANIC, Film Producer
Film Screening and discussion via Skype on PRETTY VILLAGE (68 min.): a film about a Bosnian village and what happens to a society torn apart by conflict
 

Twenty years after the end of The Bosnian War, concentration camp survivor Kemal Pervanic returns to his village to find a community still at war with itself. When Kemal tracks down the school teacher who tortured him in the camps he is forced to ask if reconciliation can ever be possible while the perpetrators of terrible crimes are still free.

Human Rights Awards -- applications now accepted with a deadline of February 26

As a part of its commitment to recognizing the achievements of students in
human rights and to offering new experiential learning opportunities, the
Human Rights Program is pleased to announce its array of awards, financial
support, and internships available for students in 2016. Whether students
are seeking their Bachelor's, Master's, PhD, or professional degree, the
Program is thrilled to be offering a number of ways in which to support
their work in promoting and protecting human rights.

HGMV sneak peek at forthcoming book by UMN faculty, "Legacies of Violence in Contemporary Spain: Exhuming the Past, Understanding the Present"

Thursday, February 25
4:00 PM
710 Social Sciences Building
Professors Ofelia Ferrán (Spanish and Portuguese) and Lisa Hilbink (Political Science):
"Legacies of Violence in Contemporary Spain: Exhuming the Past, Understanding the Present"

The book brings together perspectives from history, political science, literary and cultural studies, forensic and cultural anthropology, international human rights law, sociology, and art. It puts these diverse fields in dialogue with each other to analyze the multiple legacies of Francoist violence in contemporary Spain, with a special focus on the exhumations of mass graves from the Civil War and post-war era. In exploring the multifaceted nature of a society’s reckoning with past violence, the book speaks not only to those interested in contemporary Spain and Western Europe, but also to those studying issues of transitional and post-transitional justice in other national and regional contexts. In this presentation, Professors Ferrán and Hilbink will highlight three themes found across the various chapters: the hidden in plain sight/site nature of the legacies of Francoist violence; the classificatory limbo into which the Franco regime often falls due to its betwixt and between location in geopolitical time and space; and how Spanish society has begun to move away from the fear-driven “consensus” of the Transition era to a new, more democratic “contentious coexistence.” 

CHGS Presents USHMM Research Fellow PEDRO CORREA speaking about the Spanish government's paradoxical politics and policies regarding Jews during WWII

Thursday, February 18, 4:00 PM 
710 Social Sciences Building
PEDRO CORREA, Research Fellow, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The Spanish Paradox: Was Spain a Passive Accomplice or ‘Savior’ during the Holocaust?

"The Spanish Paradox: Was Spain a Passive Accomplice or ‘Savior’ during the Holocaust," highlights the various links between Francoist Spain and the Holocaust, and assesses the role of the Spanish government in relation to the treatment of the Spanish Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe, as well as to the influx of Jewish refugees to Spain more broadly.

Pedro Correa Martín-Arroyo is currently the Diane and Howard Fellow at the USHMM, and PhD candidate a the London School of Economics (LSE). His research interests gravitate around the role of the neutral countries during the Holocaust. In particular, his doctoral project addresses the international management of the Jewish refugee crisis in Spain and Portugal during World War II.